


Mother's Day

by voodoochild



Category: Alias
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-22
Updated: 2010-03-22
Packaged: 2017-10-08 05:18:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three generations of motherhood, memories, and Mozart, according to Jack Bristow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother's Day

**Author's Note:**

> Written for **musesfool**'s "MP3 Lyrics Challenge". Song lyrics from the Scissor Sisters' "Take Your Mama Out".

**One: Diane Bristow**

_"When you grow up, livin' like a good boy oughta  
And your mama takes a shine to her best son . . ."_

You remember very few things about your mother.

One of them is her hands.

Mom had been a concert pianist before marrying Dad and having three boys running around after her. Slim, tapered fingers you've inherited, coaxing the most beautiful melodies you've ever heard out of the old Yamaha piano in the living room. She's the one who taught you to play. You cursed your small fingers as you tripped along after her on major and minor scales, but she just laughed at you.

"It will come in time, Jack. Practice makes perfect."

And it does come to you in time. Not just scales, but arpeggios, hymns, waltzes, concertos, and anything you can wrap your mile-a-minute mind and fingers around. Bach, Brahms, Handel - you've learned them all, but no matter how you play them, they don't match up to the brilliance of Mozart.

The first time you played "Lachrymosa" all the way through was for your grandfather's funeral. You cried. You were sixteen, but you cried. Not for him, or for how upset your mother was, but because you'd played Mozart's Requiem perfectly.

You remember very few things about your mother - but you have never forgotten the pride that shone through her tears.

~*~*~*~*~

**Two: Laura Bristow**

_"But now your girl's gone a missin' and your house has got an empty bed  
The folks'll wonder 'bout the wedding, they won't listen to a word you said"_

You and Laura marched up the aisle at your wedding to Mozart's Don Giovanni.

She'd always had a love of music that matched your own - a love of everything that matched your own - and you would spend hours arguing with her.

You've always shared Sydney. Laura had seemed happy when you found out about the pregnancy on a routine doctor's visit, which in retrospect, means nothing. Every day you spent in solitary was spent going over the most minute seconds of your life with her, scrutinizing half-remembered reactions and body language in an attempt to separate Laura from Irina.

You still don't know if you've managed it.

Because Laura is always there. She creeps into every instant-message conversation you've shared over two years. She is buried in the low moan of your name in a hotel room in Panama. She hides in a sly wink over Irina's shoulder in Moscow. And she reappears with a vengeance in a bank in Prague.

Because the one thing you've always agreed on is that Sydney is to be protected at all costs.

You never thought you'd need to protect her from Laura. You should have remembered your wedding song - _Non mi dir, bell'idol mio_.

Tell me not of my beautiful idol . . .

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Three: Sydney Bristow**

_"When your mama heard the way that you'd been talking  
I tried to tell you that all she'd wanna do is cry"_

You never wanted your daughter to follow in your footsteps.

You could have been very happy if Sydney finished grad school and went on to become a teacher like Laura. Would have greatly preferred the guilt-inducing idea of another "Ms. Bristow" teaching high-school English to the innumerable bruises and mission briefings over the years. And as proud as you are of her abilities in espionage and linguistics, all you can keep thinking is that she should never have been brought into your world.

Because what father wants to see his daughter play the whore and seduce a diamond merchant for information? What father should be frightened to hear his daughter's voice every time he walks into his workplace? What father has been to too many morgues and begun to schedule too many false funerals for his daughter to count?

What father doesn't want the best for his daughter?

You've already tried making amends. You spend time with Isabelle, your granddaughter, whom you never thought you'd live to see. The one you've already begun to teach Mozart to - she's already kicked her legs all through The Magic Flute.

She already makes you proud. Just like her mother.


End file.
